Contractor Behind 405 Closure Could Face Heavy Fines For Not Finishing On Time

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — The contractor doing the demolition work on the 405 Freeway this weekend, dubbed “carmageddon” for the inevitable havoc the shutdown will create, could face heavy fines if the highway doesn’t reopen on time.

Beginning Friday night, the northbound freeway will be closed for 10 miles between the Ventura (101) and Santa Monica (10) freeways. The southbound freeway will be closed from the 101 Freeway to Skirball Center Drive. The freeway and all ramps are expected to be reopened to traffic by 6 a.m. Monday.

Kiewit will be fined $6,000 for every 10 minutes each side of the highway remains closed after 6 a.m. Monday.

“We based that on the cost of delay,” Caltrans 7th District Director Mike Miles said. “For every minute of delay, we figure there is a cost to the public.”

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency coordinating the 405 closure project, is considering a monetary incentive for Kiewit to finish the project ahead of schedule, but has not set a final figure.

Local officials have been warning motorists for weeks about the impending closure — urging people to avoid driving through the area. Roughly 500,000 vehicles travel on the freeway through the Sepulveda Pass on Saturdays and Sundays, and re-routing that traffic is expected to have reverberating impacts on streets and freeways throughout the region.

One Comment

Typical overly delicate Americans. Stop whining about everything. I take the 405 every morning and I couldn’t care less if they close it for a month. There are plenty of detours one can take all the way from the valley to LAX. Not Sepulveda….that jams up with idiots thinking its their only option.

Bev Glen used to get backed up even when the 405 was open when i used to travel from the valley to century city 20 years ago – i can’t imagine what it must be like now on a commute. and with the 405 closed? yikes!

Sorry, Gary, but your numerous typos make you the idiot of this forum. Please avoid the Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers before posting here, and open your dictionary. Jennifer Try is not a proper noun, and PLEASE GIVE YOUR CAPS KEY a well-deserved respite. Ugh.

@ Not a Moron – It’s very infantile of you to school someone on their grammar and punctuation when you yourself need as much education on the subject as you claim GARY does. Re-read your comment again and try to figure out with your tiny brain what needs fixing. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones….

A fine to an independent contractor for ‘possible’ delay. WOW…and CalTrans(gov’t workers) have been a colossal F-up for the better part of the last century!! Really? If we left it to CalTran they wouldn’t even come close to finishing the project until 2020!

“For every minute of delay, we figure there is a cost to the public.” How many people will see any of this money? The people that end up late for work on Monday, or not able to get there at all?
And for you morons who are telling people to stay home, there are many out there that CANT stay home. Who pays for the roads that we use? WE DO. For someone to tell us that we can’t use them or to stop whining when we can’t, that is wrong. The money for these roads comes out of our pockets, the taxpayers. Every time we put a gallon of gas in our cars, we are paying for these roads. So QUIT telling people not to use what they have already paid for.